<h5>Did you know about the Indian Women Cricket Team?</h5>  <p>If I ask you to tell me the name of your favourite cricketer, you’ll probably name Virat Kohli, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar or some other equally cool dude. But if I ask you to tell me the name of any woman cricketer from India, would you be able to tell any?</p>
<p>Did you know that the oldest world championship cup in cricket is the Women’s World Cup? It started in 1973, two years before the Men’s World Cup. If you are a big cricket fan, you might know that Sachin Tendulkar scored a double-century (that’s 200 runs!) in One Day Internationals (ODI) in 2010. But hardly anyone knows that the first person to score a double-century in ODIs was an Australian woman cricketer named Belinda Clarke in 1997.
If Women’s Cricket is just as awesome as Men’s Cricket, then don’t you think it’s time we celebrated them just as we do for our boys in blue? In 2023, they are finally going to have their own Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament as well.</p> <h5>What’s the history of women’s cricket in India?</h5>  <p>In 1973, women’s cricket officially began with the creation of the Women’s Cricket Association of India (Association). The Association conducted national level competitions in which women from all states participated.
In 1975, an Australian women’s cricket team came to tour India and gave our girls in blue a great chance to play against outsiders for the very first time. After the Australia series, India played against New Zealand, England, and West Indies. 
</p> <h5>Were these women’s cricket matches popular in India?</h5>  <p>These matches were very popular in India and thousands of people came to see them. The teams from other countries were surprised at such crowds because, in their country, hardly anyone came to see women play cricket.</p>
<p>India played in the Women’s World Cup in 1978 for the first time. We did not win a single match then. After many years of hard work, India reached the Women’s World Cup finals in 2005, 2017, and 2020 (how incredible is that!).</p>
<p>In 2020, when India made it to the finals of the Women’s World Cup, it became the most-watched women’s event in history. 
</p> <h5>What’s the Women’s IPL going to be like?</h5> <figure>
        <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/newsahoot.appspot.com/o/womens-indian-premier-league-to-start-by-2023%2Fwomens-indian-premier-league-to-start-by-2023-section1.jpeg?alt=media&token=d75da6e4-4e18-46ef-b66c-9453c6193da0" alt="What’s the Women’s IPL going to be like?" >
        <figcaption>The India Women’s National Cricket Team gathers on the field during a match against Australia. Photo by Robert Drummond / CC0 1.0; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/2017_Women%27s_Cricket_World_Cup_IMG_2748_%2835334320903%29.jpg</figcaption>
      </figure> <p>The women’s IPL will give us a chance to watch and cheer for women cricketers on TV. However, big TV channels don’t promote women’s cricket as they do men’s cricket. This is because they feel that people will not be interested in watching women play. But that’s not true at all.</p>
<p>Bollywood is going to release two movies this year based on the lives of two legendary women cricket players - ‘Shabash Mithu’, based on the life of Indian Women’s Cricket Captain Mithali Raj and ‘Chakda Express’, based on former captain Jhulan Goswami.
These examples show that the popularity of Indian Women’s Cricket is at an all-time high. The Women’s IPL is going to be a smashing success. Someday soon in the future, we’ll be proudly naming our favourite women's cricket players just as we name our favourite men's players today.</p>

Did you know that the women’s cricket team of India is just as awesome as the men’s team? Let’s find out more about them.

Women's Indian Premier League to Start by 2023

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Women's Indian Premier League to Start by 2023

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